Video

Video by Tech. Sgt. Russell Scalf, Tech. Sgt. Colleen Urban

Final Approach

380th Air Expeditionary Wing

April 24, 2014 | 2:48

Lieutenant Colonel Jeff Klosky is an aviator who has spent much of his life racing out of twilight and into the dawn. After a storied career, spanning 19 years in the U-2 Dragon Lady, sundown has finally become visible on his horizon.
Transcript:
When I was seven-years-old, my parents sent my sister and I up to my grandparents in Rhode Island to, uh go visit with them for the summer. I just remember, uh, getting I think it might have been my first time on a plane, at least that I can recall, just a DC-9 or something like that flying out of uh Washington National Airport and uh I just remember looking out the window and as soon as they pushed the engines up being pushed back in my seat and then getting to see the Washington Monument and The White House and all the neat buildings there through the window and it just, it just sank into me there that that’s what I wanted to do with my life. I started at the, uh U.S. Air Force Academy, uh class of 1989, uh graduated there and went off to pilot training at, now closed, Williams Air Force Base in Arizona. Uh, I wanted to do something a little bit different, uh and I looked into the U-2 a little bit at the time, and it seemed very interesting so it was an all-volunteer assignment, you had to submit a package with uh all your records and uh and apply for the job. It is a different thing to seal yourself in a space suit, uh and sit in an aircraft all by your lonesome for about ten hours. You do get to talk to people on the radios and what not, but uh to go out and do that and really enjoy it, um takes a quirky personality. I was the six hundred and fifty-ninth person to solo the U-2 in the history since nineteen fifty-five and even now nineteen years later we are still only on number nine fifty or so, so it’s uh, it’s a small group of people who have touched it and uh we are a small community, we know each other pretty well, uh and again it’s a piece of history that it’s, it’s just neat being a part of. As far as twenty-five hundred hours, on active duty in the air force as far as I know I am number three, so it’s it’s it’s a small crowd to be a part of and it’s it’s just neat to do that. You know, a big thank you, to all the folks who have given me an opportunity to be here. It was Senator John Warner who got me into the Air Force Academy, it was my parents who pushed me, instructor pilots who taught me to fly, the folks who went before me and told me about the U-2, um and the support of my family, it’s just, it’s been pretty amazing. So I would like to say thanks to anybody and everybody who’s been a part of it.